Kota Kinabalu and Mount Kinabalu

Sunset from Kota Kinabalu

I never thought I’d visit Borneo. Who goes to Borneo? My cousin visited Borneo once as part of a National Geographic expedition mapping out caves or something like that, and it just seems like the kind of exotic place you see in documentaries but would never actually go visit. Well, here we are. Kota Kinabalu, or KK as it is called, is the capital of the Malaysian state of Sabah. The island of Borneo is actually pretty massive - the third largest non-continental island in the world behind Greenland and New Guinea - and it is split into three countries. Indonesia has the largest slice, followed by Malaysia with it’s two states Sabah and Sarawek, followed by tiny Brunei. I’m not really sure why we chose Malaysia, probably because Sabah contains an amazing amount of things to do in a relatively small area. You’d expect Borneo to be all jungle and backwater towns, but KK is surprisingly large and modern. We were a bit more in our element in KK than in Singapore - it is cheaper, a bit grungier, and it has amazing sunsets. For our one day in KK we decided to visit the nearby island of Sapi, part of a group of islands composing the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. All of these islands are pretty touristy, as they are only about 15 minutes by speedboat from the KK pier, though they still maintain their rainforest interior and the reefs surrounding them aren’t in too bad of shape all things considered. We did a bit of snorkeling (word to the wise - don’t try to play with clownfish, I was bitten by Nemo!), laid on the beach, and did a short walk around the island. A nice day in the sun and we particularly enjoyed watching the Asian tourists try to swim.

Snorkeling area - notice all the PFD's

Nemo attack wounds

The Borneo Lonely Planet raves about the Filipino restaurants serving up BBQ seafood during the night markets in KK. We are not into seafood, especially Steph, though I enjoy a shrimp or two every now and then. It all looked pretty cool - each little open-air “restaurant” had a bunch of fresh seafood sitting out front. You basically point at what you want and they go grill it up for you. We were basically “just looking” until one eager salesman started talking to us and telling us what everything was. I thought the lobsters looked cool, and when he told me I could get a small one for only 10 ringgits (about $3.30), I was sold. I added another 200 grams of shrimp for another 10 ringgits and we had a seat. Luckily these restaurants also sell non-seafood so Steph ordered up a plate of a Malaysian staple - Nasi Goreng Ayam (nasi = rice, goreng = fried, ayam = chicken), so chicken fried rice, and only 4 ringgit ($1.30). The chicken fried rice was actually really good (best I have ever had), but my seafood turned out to be amazing. Everything was cooked perfectly, nice and buttery, and they had some sort of seasoning on top that added just the right amount of saltiness. I don’t love seafood, but this was one of my favorite meals that I’ve ever had. Pick out what you want, have a seat, and this delicious meal is served up for less than 7 bucks. Can’t beat that. My only regret is that I didn’t discover this until our last night in KK. For dessert there’s Pisang Goreng - thin slices of banana dipped in batter and deep fried. I literally couldn't believe it when the lady told me 5 pieces for 1 ringgit (33 cents). I was sure there was something lost in translation, but that's actually the tourist price - other places gave me 7 pieces for 1 ringgit. If you can find fresh ones, it is absolutely divine.

Seafood feast

open-air "restaurants" in the night market

From KK we headed up into the mountains for a much-needed respite from the heat. Mount Kinabalu is less than a couple hours from KK and is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia at 13,436 feet above sea level. You can climb to the top of the mountain, but it is both very popular and very expensive so we opted out. Once we saw a short glimpse of the peak I was regretting not climbing it, but they pretty much make you do it in two days, with an overnight stay in a hut that you have to reserve months in advance. The trail to the top is only about 6 miles, so we looked into doing it in one day, but they make this pretty hard to do and the clouds envelop the peak every day at about 9 am, so you’d have to start very early. We saved ourselves the hassle and just did a long day hike through the jungle and hung out at our hostel, officially named Kinabalu Mountain Lodge but unofficially the Moth Capital of the World. This place was overrun with moths. We knew this coming in, as it mentioned it online, but we were not expecting this. Literally thousands of them covering the walls at all times of the day, but of course mostly active at night. There were all shapes and sizes, with a few being solidly bird-sized. Let’s just stay Steph was not a fan. I thought they were pretty cool when they just sat there, but some of them would go frantic and flap around in your ear. Why do bugs do that?

Mount Kinabalu in the background

Some of the many, many moths

One day we were having lunch outside the park when a group came up to the restaurant with a big banner. Apparently they were protesting against something and it didn't take much convincing to get Steph's support behind their campaign, even though she had no idea what they were campaigning for. They could have been protesting women's right to vote for all she knew, but Steph jumped in there for the photo op. Turns out they were fighting an Australian company's mining plans in Borneo, so probably a good cause. Stop Lynas!

Mount Kinabalu was a pretty cool area, but there just wasn’t that much to do if you weren’t doing the summit hike. We really enjoyed the cool mountain weather, but were looking forward to seeing more than just rainforest - we wanted wildlife! So we booked a room at Osman’s homestay on the Kinabatangan River in eastern Sabah - the best place to see orangutan, monkeys, and pygmy elephants in the wild!

Cool flowers

more cool flowers

Singapore

First impression of Singapore: reminds us a lot of Hong Kong - first-world Asian city with a lot of white expats, professionals, and tourists running around. Port city. Former British colony. Both are mixing pots of many different cultures, equaling a diverse population as well as cuisine. Singapore probably doesn’t retain as noticeable of a British aftertaste as Hong Kong does, but it has been independent of Britain since the 1950’s so much longer than Hong Kong. The mix of cultural influences in Singapore is also different - there is a very large Chinese population but also stong Indian and Malaysian influences as well. That brings us to cuisine - Singapore is known for it’s good food, and 95% of our research into the city was focused on what to eat and where to get it. If you are a follower of our blog you’ll know what big fans we are of Asian shopping malls - not so much for the shopping as for the food courts that inevitable occupy either the basement or top level of the mall, or sometimes both. This is no different in Singapore, though their food courts are much too commercial - there are actual chains of food courts (if that makes sense) and they all have a theme to which they are decorated to the max. We tried them a couple times, but opted for the much more hole-in-the-wall hawker centers instead. Think of a big open-air cafeteria with lots of tables set up and row after row of food stalls, each selling only a few dishes as they do in our beloved Thai food courts. The popular opinion of these hawker centers is too see which stands had the longest lines of locals and get in line with them. If, however, you aren’t into porridge (whatever that is), which always seemed to have the longest line, you can always go with chicken rice. Chicken rice is a classic Singaporean dish - fragrant rice cooked in chicken broth with slices of poached chicken on top. That’s it, not to weird huh? You can put chili sauce on it or a dark, sweet soy sauce. It only costs about 2 or 3 bucks per plate and while it is good, it didn’t exactly blow our mind (it is just chicken and rice, after all). Our favorite dish that we tried turned out to be black carrot cake, and it’s not what you are thinking. It’s kind of like a stir fry of carrots, onions, radish, cubes of rice dough, and egg with a sauce that seems to be primarily the dark soy sauce. It sounds weird but it is good, though I’m not sure I’d want it for breakfast as it is often enjoyed in Singapore.

Chicken Rice

Carrot Cake

We tried a lot of different food in Singapore - most of it we liked, though anything containing seafood pretty much didn’t get eaten. Probably my favorite was the dried BBQ pork - a favorite gift for Chinese New Year. It’s sort of in the middle between bacon and jerky - not too dry but still nice and chewy with a thin layer of barbeque sauce. Perfection. Steph even liked it though don’t tell her that it tastes a lot like bacon.

Steph with dried BBQ pork

Singapore was hot! I guess this shouldn’t shock anybody as it is very close to the equator, but we were not ready for this kind of heat. When we travel we like to walk around a lot, mainly because we are cheap but also to get a feel for the city we are in. This held true in Singapore, but we had to take lots and lots of breaks to stay reasonably cool. Luckily AC is the name of the game in Singapore, and we would sigh with relief every time we’d hop onto the metro or detour through a mall (there are literally hundreds of malls in Singapore). Probably the longest air conditioning fast we had to make was during our trip to the botanical gardens. The gardens were nice but the real attraction was the orchid garden - aka Steph heaven. I moped around while Steph took about 491 pictures of the orchids, which I must admit were lovely. Luckily the gift shop had AC and I was able to pick up a refreshing isotonic drink to replenish my electrolytes - because when you are sweating profusely, why not pick up a can of Pocari Sweat?

This stuff was actually pretty good, but what's with the name? Who came up with that?

While there aren’t really any famous landmarks that I’d ever heard of in Singapore, there is plenty to see if you can brave the heat. Chinatown was our first stop - mainly for the food but also to admire the touristy but charming nevertheless row houses.

Little India was another district we visited primarily for the food (butter chicken and fresh baked naan…yummy), though we enjoyed seeing a small peek into Indian culture. After all, this is probably the closest to India we will ever get. The last district we visited in Singapore was the riverside district - containing a mixture of modern skyscrapers and colonial heritage. This is the area where Sir Thomas Raffles first made land in what is now Singapore’s CBD, which eventually led to the area becoming a British colony. Probably the most significant landmark, at least for tourists, is the statue of the Merlion - apparently the official symbol of Singapore, a half-cat, half-fish statue that squirts water out of it’s mouth. The tourism board came up with the idea, and judging by the throngs of tourists taking typically touristy pictures, it worked. Though apparently in Singapore slang, the word merlion means to vomit…

Classy, as always

Cool building - the Marina Bay Sands

For our final day in Singapore we chose to go to the zoo. No, the zoo is not for children. Singapore Zoo has a very good reputation as the “best zoo in Asia,” but judging by the standards set by any zoo I’ve been to outside the US, that didn’t necessarily mean much. We were, however, pleasantly surprised. The zoo was in every way as good as any zoo we have ever been to, with the added benefit (I think) of them being able to get away with things I’m not sure you could in the States. For one - there were lots of open-air exhibits. The orangutans were basically free to run amok, with ropes and bridges for them crossing the walking paths for us humans. If they decided to come to ground level they could easily walk over and visit the lions in their enclosure. They don’t of course, but they are funny animals. We’re very looking forward to seeing them in the wild when we visit (spoiler alert!) Borneo soon.

There was also a big open-air enclosure full of big fruit bats, birds, sloths, mouse deer and ring-tailed lemurs. It was really cool to get up close to the lemurs as they would generally ignore you, but I’m surprised they don’t have a problem with people trying to touch them and getting their finger bitten off.

Ring-tailed lemur

The rest of the zoo was pretty much like any other good zoo you could visit - there were elephants and monkeys and different areas for wildlife from various parts of the globe, all with spacious and natural enclosures. Steph liked the giraffes and I liked watching the gibbons swing from tree to tree. It was a good day.

Overall Singapore was great - certainly not our favorite city we’ve ever visited (not even our favorite Asian city), but it’s a good ‘intro to Asia’ city and could definitely keep anyone entertained for a few days at least. I must add a few thoughts about the strict rules that Singaporeans live by. The heated debates that often divide Americans on what the government should or shouldn’t allow us to have pale in comparison to the restrictions set on the people of Singapore. Gum is outlawed. No, not gun (well, that too), GUM. I’m not kidding. It, apparently, is just too messy so it’s banned. The only way you can get it is with a prescription from your doctor! That’s just one extreme example, though the restrictions and the highly publicized and hefty fines that you would incur should you break them are legendary - so much so that you can buy tshirts at every souvenir shop with the major infractions and the corresponding fine. Chewing gum - $1000, jaywalking - $1000, littering - $1000, spitting in the streets - $1000, having food on the metro - $500. If that's not harsh enough, having illegal narcotics is a mandatory death sentence! Steph was constantly paranoid about jaywalking, which is quite frankly one of my favorite hobbies. Anyways, we made it 3 days in Singapore with not one single fine and off we are to Borneo!

For more orchid pictures, and others from around Singapore, check out the album HERE!